Efficient #timemanagement involves management of the classroom both before and during teaching. To be efficient in time management, teachers need to thoroughly plan for lessons and be prepared at the beginning of each day. If they are not, planning responsibilities start to pile up and lead to scrambling during the actual lessons. During teaching, efficient time management is being aware of how long you want to spend on each aspect of the lesson and being continuously conscious of how much time you have left. Transitioning between activities and making sure you have enough time for clean-up are two of the most important parts of time management. Especially in an elementary school where classes are continuously in and out, teachers have to make sure students are ready to go when the teacher comes to pick them up.
Efficient time management fosters effective teaching and maximizes student learning because it allows lessons and student work time to run smoothly. Being prepared and calm during class time communicates to students the teacher’s “withitness.” Students can sense when teachers are underprepared or fumbling through a lesson, so having it all together is really important.
Managing time and balancing the responsibilities of student teaching was a difficult to adjust to at the beginning of my experience, but as time passes I am adapting to the routine of my match-up teacher’s schedule. Since the planning periods are limited in the schedule at CLPE, I have to be efficient during planning times. Going to school early has been the most effective time management strategy because I am more productive right away in the morning than I am after school. To balance my student teaching with other things in my life, I try to make sure to step back from teaching responsibilities after a certain time in the evening. Setting boundaries between school and personal time at home have been important to me in making sure I don’t wear myself out. As a perfectionist, I have been working on making efficient decisions and being okay with things not being “perfect.”
One specific example of a trick I’ve used to improve my time management is a goal my match-up teacher and I have been working on. After a CLPE staff meeting led by Trauma Informed Schools (school psychologists), my match-up teacher and I made some goals for making students aware of daily goals, expectations, and plans. We began implementing 1-2 minutes of music at the beginning of each class period, which is meant to help students take a moment to calm themselves and get ready to transition to a new subject. Additionally, I decided to start using a timer at the end of the period so students know when it is time to clean up. The timer is set for 5 minutes before clean-up time; when the timer goes off, they know to stop what they are doing and start clean up.
As a reflection of time management in the last two weeks, I created an art piece that symbolizes the passing of time. I have used a screen printing technique to transfer the design of a dreamcatcher onto fabric. Instead of having the strands of the dreamcatcher wrap around a circular frame, they stretching and unwinding outward. I chose to allow them to stretch out to reference that they can continue to grow and stretch out. The story of the dreamcatcher’s meaning is about a Lakota figure, Iktomi, who took the form of a spider to weaving a web. This web was meant to represent the passing of time and the cycle of life from birth to death.
I related this symbol to time management because it symbolizes people’s presence in the passing of time. Sometimes I get frustrated with the limited amount of time I get with each elementary class; sometimes I feel like it’s hard to get them fully focused and into their art making when the transition time is so fast. So many of them have said, “I wish I could stay in art all day!” With this limited time, the only thing I can do is do my best to improve my time management of the classroom and give them the best art experiences I can.